Previously-unseen footage published by Ukraine's security service on Sunday appears to show Kyiv's forces retaking a key Black Sea outpost from Russia two years.
Ukrainian forces, including Kyiv's SBU security service, "conducted a unique and extremely important operation" on Snake Island in June 2022, the SBU said in a post to messaging app Telegram on Sunday.
Moscow's fighters had targeted Snake Island, also known as Zmiinyi Island, in the first hours of the invasion effort beginning on February 24, 2022. But Ukrainian personnel on the island quickly became famous for an expletive-laden response to a Russian warship's demands for surrender.
Clashes between Russian and Ukrainian troops around Snake Island hit the headlines again last June, when Ukraine reclaimed the outpost after Russia said it was retreating from the island as a gesture of "goodwill."
"Russia's Armed Forces completed their tasks on Snake Island and withdrew the garrison stationed there," a Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson said in late June.
In the clip published by the SBU on Sunday, what appear to be Ukrainian troops approach Snake Island and fire on targets. Bodycam footage shows the fighters landing on the island, making their way through crumbled buildings while firing their weapons.
Newsweek could not independently verify the video, and has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.
The operation "consisted of several stages," the SBU said in its brief statement. The retaking of Snake Island "was of strategic importance, because since then the gradual displacement of the enemy from the Black Sea began," the military intelligence agency added.
Звільнення о. Зміїний: унікальні кадри воїнів СБУ
— СБ України (@ServiceSsu) June 30, 2024
У червні 2022 року спецпризначенці ЦСО «А» СБУ разом із бойовими побратимами з ГУР МОУ та ЗСУ провели унікальну та надзвичайно важливу операцію.
Пам’ятаємо Героїв України, які віддали свої життя у цій битві.
1/3 pic.twitter.com/qtDOT8nNLg
Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine's GUR military intelligence agency, has previously described Snake Island as strategically key for civilian, trade and military reasons.
"Whoever controls the island can at any moment block the movement of civilian vessels in all directions to the south of Ukraine" and also attack western Ukraine, Budanov said in mid-May 2022.
It sits close to Romania in the northwestern Black Sea, where Ukraine has been able to successfully threaten Russia's Black Sea Fleet that operates partly out of Russia's Sevastopol base, on the western edge of the annexed Crimean peninsula.
Reports have also suggested the Kremlin is planning a new military base at the port of Ochamchire in Abkhazia, a breakaway region of Georgia. This would put Russian assets even further from Ukraine's coastline.
Western intelligence has evaluated that Russia has restricted its activity in the northwestern Black Sea, moving its assets further east to its Novorossiysk base. Moscow has also invested in new protections for its fleet stationed at the base, as Kyiv has sought to extend its reach to these facilities.
"Essentially, we have confined the Russian fleet to the Novorossiysk bay," SBU chief Vasyl Maliuk said in late May.
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